Transformation and evolution
from the difficult seasons of life
I read this quote the other day in a book I was finishing -
“So often our greatest beauty comes after our most difficult seasons of transformation.” ~Jamie Kern Lima
It was discussed amongst important lessons to not forget about our inherent sense of self worth.
Some of us—me! me!—equate our sense of self worth with what we do/achieve, rather than who we are/in just being.
I learned that lesson very well from a young age and internalized it.
So, it’s been hard for me to believe and accept and feel that I am worthy without my laurels - education, titles, publications, volunteer work, service work, acts of kindness to others, etc.
But, as the author points out, I also believe and have faith that I don’t do anything to earn my Creator’s love. That it is just.
If I had to, I would fall short.
So, in the ways that she co-opted my own self-doubt and used my own faith to reveal the illogical tendencies in my thinking/beliefs - I concur.
It’s true.
I hold on tight to the quote like the one above because I have to believe in hope.
Before I healed, and before my depression and anxiety was managed, before therapy and medication and a solid understanding of PTSD and cPTSD, before sobriety —
I didn’t have much hope. I was cynical, pessimistic, raw.
But - I cling to hope now. I embrace it and welcome it.
I think that my own growth as a person is largely due to the suicides and the trauma and the narcissistic abuse and all I’ve survived.
It hurt like hell.
But I am a more compassionate person, empathetic and considerate. I listen better and I don’t judge like I used to because - life has a way of humbling you.
And if it doesn’t - I firmly believe you’re not being very honest with yourself or very self-actualized or you’re using others misfortunes to feel better about yourself.
If there’s anything I understand from my life’s purpose and mission now is this -
I am meant to be a cycle breaker. A survivor. And someone who was meant to recognize intergenerational trauma and patterns of abuse and alcoholism and trauma and depression and anxiety, and to break free from the mold and precedent that was set by my family.
They weren’t bad people. But they were hurt. Traumatized. Mentally unwell. They didn’t get the help they needed, the knowledge and education and therapy and medications. Or whatever they needed.
I live in a different space and time -
I can learn and grow and evolve in ways that htey could not.
It would be a shame not to make use of the abilities that I have to do so.
Finally, one other thing that I just learned in this book, Worthy, that I read was this -
I have long heard about the caterpillar becoming the butterfly, the chrysalis - I am sure you have too.
However, I didn’t know until reading this book that the caterpillar actually liquefies before reforming into a butterfly with wings, etc.
So, they are incredibly vulnerable to prey, to death, to insecticides, etc.
It makes their transformation all the more awe-inspiring.
I love these metaphors of phoenixes rising from the ashes or the metamorphosis of caterpillar to butterflies.
We humans are capable of that too.
